A week had passed since Fuankilo’s quiet funeral.
Shadik, who’d attended the ceremony, had returned to the Central Branch headquarters. Word was, Stella would soon be heading back to the Northeast Branch as well.
Under normal circumstances, I would’ve accompanied her, continuing my development, rising further through the cult’s ranks. But now wasn’t the time for progress reports and training plans. Not with Fuankilo dead and Joanne still unconscious. No one was in the mood to talk strategy.
Pawk and Celestia were working themselves to the bone trying to cover for Fuankilo’s absence. Aros had disappeared again, as he often did. The entire cult was descending into one of its worst periods of disorder in years.
Joanne still hadn’t opened her eyes.
I sat beside her, brushing a strand of hair away from her forehead and letting my fingers graze her cheek. Her skin was warm. Soft. She seemed almost peaceful.
The brainwashing had already taken hold. It must have been fully embedded. I could only assume that she hadn’t woken because her mind was still sorting itself out. Reassembling.
I needed her to wake up. I needed her to talk to me and to stand by my side. We still had to break Celestia’s conditioning together. She was the first ally I’d made in this hellish place. Of course, I was impatient.
Over the past week, I’d become aware of something else.
My thoughts were tainted, tainted in a way I couldn’t ignore.
Every time I remembered that Joanne’s organs were inside me and that mine were resting delicately within her small frame, something moved in me. Something feverish and alive.
My blood boiled and burned. A thrill surged through me that was unmistakably sexual.
There was no denying it anymore. Just thinking about the exchange made my body shudder. This swelling warmth that crept over me like I wanted to cradle her… cherish her… claim her. This contamination inside me had to be her influence. I could feel this other self, this foreign presence, rewriting the laws of my mind.
If she’s been altered even more than I have, maybe we’ll actually be able to talk like equals…
The worst-case scenario lingered like a shadow in the corner of my thoughts: that my sense of self—my logic, my morals, even my desires—were being rewritten in her image. That I was being pulled into her madness, and not the other way around.
Our original dynamic had been clear: I was the rational one, and Joanne was deranged. But what if, after all this, she woke up sane, and I was the one who’d slipped into madness?
We’d trade roles. It would be a pointless reversal. The only true victory would be both of us—normal, stable, human—standing together to crush the cult.
I sighed. Her condition hadn’t changed at all. She was still sleeping. Still untouched by all the chaos she’d left behind.
Needing something to do, I left to fetch some fresh water. I dipped a cloth into the cool bucket, wrung it out, and returned to gently wipe her down.
Suddenly, I noticed something.
“What was that?”
Her cheek. It had twitched.
A barely perceptible shift beneath her skin. Her eyelids, too, began fluttering, as if caught on the edge of a dream. They twitched in small, involuntary tremors, the kind that suggested they could open any second now.
I dropped the towel without thinking, my breath catching as I leaned over Joanne’s delicate face.
Then finally, it happened.
“Nnh…”
A soft voice emerged from her, rough with disuse. She let out a faint groan and slowly opened her eyes.
She stared up at the ceiling in silence, then calmly raised herself into a sitting position. I immediately moved to support her frail back, pulling her into my arms with everything I had.
“Welcome back, Joanne! Welcome back!”
Finally, after everything, I’d regained someone I could truly talk to, someone who could understand me, speak with me not in riddles or twisted dogma, but honestly. And not just anyone, this was Joanne.
If she were on my side, there was nothing we couldn’t do.
I eased away from her, meeting her gaze head-on. Her eyes, still heavy with sleep, locked onto mine.
“Ah… Good morning, Oakley.”
Her voice was the same as ever—gentle, affectionate, laced with a kind of warmth that hadn’t changed… and yet, it felt different. A little softer, maybe. A little more human.
Or perhaps… less.
There was something off about her. Not dangerous, but strange, like a presence that teetered between the real and the otherworldly. A part of me recoiled. Another part couldn’t look away.
Snapping myself out of it, I forced the words I’d prepared to the front of my mind and asked her plainly, “Joanne-sama. I know you understand what I’m trying to do, but I have to ask anyway. Will you help me destroy the Aros Temple Cult?”
“Sure, I’ll help.” Her answer came so quickly I almost missed it.
All the tension I’d been clenching melted into confusion. Her tone was light. It sounded genuinely easygoing. There was no doubt in her voice.
It wasn’t a lie. At least, I wanted to believe it wasn’t.
However, that strange aura around her still prickled at the edge of my senses. Maybe it was just the aftermath of the organ transplant. Maybe I was still shaken by the unknown. Or maybe I was right to be uneasy about how eager she sounded.
Still, I had no choice but to move forward.
I opened my mouth to push the plan ahead, but she beat me to it.
“You don’t have to explain. I get it. If the long-term goal is wrecking the cult, then the short-term one is breaking Celestia’s brainwashing, right?”
“Y-Yes. Exactly.”
“How were you going to do it? Don’t tell me you were gonna try the same method you used with me.”
“Right now… I don’t think I have the stamina to survive something like that.”
“So, if you did have the stamina, you would’ve gone through with it?”
Joanne narrowed her eyes in a bemused smile, the corners of her mouth twitching in mild exasperation.
She was right, of course. If I’d had the stamina and my own unaltered organs still inside me, I would have done the same thing. But given my current condition, opening myself up again anytime soon was out of the question.
“It’d be far more efficient to transplant the organs you received from me into Celestia and let the next phase of psychic contamination run its course.”
“I mean… wow,” she muttered, glancing down at her abdomen with a look of faint distaste.
I’d only gone through with it because she’d asked for it at the time. And now she was recoiling in disgust? That stings.
“Well, it’s all hypothetical for now,” I added quickly.
Whether a second transplant would trigger another memory transfer was a complete unknown. Would Celestia inherit my consciousness, Joanne’s current one, or neither? It was anyone’s guess.
Still, it felt ironic to be hesitating over uncertainty now. I’d been tightrope-walking without a safety net for this long. What was one more reckless leap into the void? Risk had always been part of the game. There was no point in flinching now.
Besides, with my record so far, even Pawk and the others were likely to sign off on the plan.
“I get the gist. So… what happens after we break Celestia’s brainwashing?”
Joanne seemed fully on board with the strategy. Maybe it was because my way of thinking had seeped into her mind during the transplant, but it felt easier to talk to her now, like we were finally speaking the same language.
“We hand Celestia over to the Orthodoxy. She can leverage what she learned during her time here to gain trust, integrate, and feed us intel from inside.”
“Hmm. Makes sense.”
“Our primary objective, for now, is to break the brainwashing. Let’s move quickly.”
“Yeah… all right. Leave it to me, Oakley.”
Just like that, the post-reawakening briefing with Joanne had progressed without a hitch.
But… I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
Every time I looked into her eyes—those spiral-patterned irises that shimmered like glass catching a madman’s fever—I found myself unable to trust her. They weren’t the same as before.
No. They’d evolved and grown deeper, more chaotic.
I didn’t make the wrong call, I told myself silently. I know I didn’t.
The only thing I could truly do now was keep telling myself that and keep walking forward.
✦ ✦ ✦
Another cultist had been there the night of Fuankilo’s death, hidden in the shadows of the smelting facility.
He’d watched the battle unfold in secret, a deadly clash between a rising star of the faith and the infamous torture executive.
“I-I saw something I really shouldn’t’ve…”
The blonde-haired man trembled where he crouched, his voice little more than a shiver. He had witnessed everything: Fuankilo’s incineration, Oakley’s blood-soaked escape, and the furnace roaring out of control. In the aftermath, all he could do was stare blankly, stunned into numb silence.
Oakley Mercury, the promising young believer—the one everyone talked about—was a traitor? The roar of fire and steel had drowned out most of the conversation, but from what little he’d seen, there was no mistaking it. Oakley had slaughtered Fuankilo with unmistakable intent.
What the hell is going on?
By the time the flames swallowed the facility, the blonde cultist was hugging his knees on the ground, trying and failing to steady his trembling body.
“This is perfect.”
His mind had twisted into something deeply warped, so much so that he hadn’t even considered reporting what he saw. No. He made a decision instantly.
He would let Oakley run free.
Why hadn’t he turned him in? The answer was disarmingly simple.
Because it would be a hell of a lot more fun this way.
Because the world might actually tear itself apart.
That alone was reason enough.
“Ah, this is the best. Joining this cult to kill time might’ve been the best decision of my life.”
The next day, he was the one who quietly spread the rumor that Fuankilo had died in an accident.
During her funeral, while the other mourners stood in silent grief, he stood just behind Oakley, watching him.
Oakley-senpai… you’re doing something really interesting, huh? Don’t be greedy. Let me play too.
His eyes glimmered with a madness too dangerous to ignore—an unfiltered, chaotic fascination.
His name was Alex Eagley.
And this jester who called life itself a game was about to make his move.